The settlement of Przhevalskoye and its environs is a land of blue lakes, birch groves and light coniferous forests of pine-trees situated at the north- west of the Smolensk Region, which has been singled out as a forest reserve of the national park "The Smolensk Land of Lakes" by now.

This place was loved very much by the great traveler and explorer of the Central Asia Nicolay Michaylovich Przhevalskiy. He obtained a manor at Sloboda settlement (now Przhevalskoye) on the lake side of Sapsho in 1881 and settled here. He made his reports of his expeditions, wrote books about his travels to the Central Asia and worked out routes of the forthcoming travels.

The museum exhibition tells about the bright and rich in events life of the great scientist, about the years of travelling. Unique documents, photos made in different years of his life, manuscripts, maps, rich scientific library collected during his lifetime, drawings, personal things, and also stuffed animals, herbarium sheets with plants collectedin his expeditions let us appreciate his outstanding personality and his contributionto the investigation of the CentralAsia.

N.M. Przhevalskiy left Sloboda for his last journey in 1888. They keep at the museum as the most valuable exhibit that particular piece of a wooden column of the house which has an inscription made by Przhevalskiy's hand with a red pencil: "August, the 5th, 1888. Good-by, Sloboda"!

One of the rooms of the museum is devoted to P. K. Kozlov, thelearner and the disciple of N.M. Przhevalskiy

Museum's building(s):

It's a two-storied wooden private residence with a terrace and a balcony built by the project of N.M. Przhevalskiy in 1887. The traveler spent the last years of his life here.

The house was burnt in the years of the Great Patriotic War; it was reconstructed at the same the building's foundation (by photos and documents) by the project of the soviet architects G.M. Aptekin and G.N. Lusoy. It is one of the rare wooden private residences of the Smolensk Region.Its peculiarity is the part of the first floor with a balconypulled out into the orchard above the porch. The porch has spacious verandas. The exit stair-cases are fenced by handrails with banisters. The roof has multileveled steep pitches. The interior of the house is five rooms on the ground floor (the cabinet, two bedrooms, a sitting-room anda dining-room) and three rooms on the first floor

Museum foundator: Gavrilenkova E.P. (1929 year of birth) - the organizer of the school museum